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Mar 05, 2009

Bells rated it:

Unless you grew up in Grand Rapids in the 1980's, don't read this book. If you did grow up in GR in the 80's... take your chances.

On one hand, of 253 pages in this book, I'd bet about 100 are dedicated to descriptions of food and packaging that food came in.
Besides tamales and tortillas, each holiday included a giant turkey... a vat of mashed potatoes with gravy boats...Stove Top Stuffing, Pillsbury crescent rolls, canned corn soaked in butter, canned string beans with cream o More...

9 comments like (6 people liked it)

Nov 23, 2007

Laurie rated it:

I went to middle school with Bich, so when I heard a clip on NPR within the last year, about an author of a memoir "growing up in a sea of blond" I perked up, thinking I, too, grew up feeling outside of the sea of blond I grew up in... Imagine my surprise when the NPR story revealed the author. I do remember
some painful substitute-teacher-butcherings of Bich's name; that Bich was extremely quiet; and she was the only girl in class who was my size-- extremely small-- which was au More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jul 10, 2007

Kricket rated it:

I have a habit of judging books by their covers, and I saw this one float past me at work and immediately wanted to read it without having any idea what it was about. Probably because I was hungry, and there are snacks on the cover.

So imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a memoir of someone growing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Nobody EVER writes books about Grand Rapids, Michigan. One time Anne Lamott mentioned Grand Rapids, very quickly, because of all of the dutch blonde peop More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Slygly rated it:

I found this book to be disappointing, but mostly because I had different ideas about what genre it was supposed to be. I was hoping for a refugee survival story. But it was mostly just a laundry list of memories from a childhood of the 80's. Much of it was familiar to me of course, but I need more than a list of favorite candy bars or a lengthy summary of the Little House books to keep me inspired. The memoir was slow to progress; the narrator frustratingly remained seven years old for what s More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Ji In rated it:

I read a criticism of this memoir by someone else who seemingly panned it on the basis that it was not written in a linear or chronological fashion, as memoirs are "supposed to be." I think this is a common misconception of memoir -- that it is "supposed to be" a time line of one's life, from birth to some magical resolution.

Not true. I generally find books like that exceedingly dull. Setting out to write one's memoir, one might outline the book in a loosely chron More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

megan rated it:

This is a solid memoir that I think I enjoyed a lot because it discussed the immigrant experience in Michigan--and maybe that resonated with me since I am a Michigan transplant, myself. However, this is mostly about the immigrant experience as related to consumer food in America (and just happens to take place on the West Coast of Michigan--Grand Rapids). I think a lot of the characters are one-dimensional with regards to how the author portrays them, but she gets her point across that way. F More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 07, 2008

Laura rated it:

This was such a disappointing book. The author is a Vietnames refugee who was raised almost entirely in the United States, but still never really fit into the ideal of becoming an American, so she tries to become an American by eating American food. Its obvious that many of these chapters appeared as individual essays in other publications, and little editing was done to make it into a cohesive story. Not only does the book jump around in different points of her life, but ominous foretelling fac More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Leah rated it:

In elementary school I had a friend named Van, a Vietnamese immigrant, who, by 5th grade, was already an amazing cook of her traditional food. In 6th grade, her parents brought in food for Van's birthday. However, instead of bringing the traditional cupcakes, or even anything Vietnamese, they brought spaghetti. I always thought that was so odd, and a little funny, but after reading this memoir by Bich Minh Nguyen, the reasons behind this unintentional social oddity seems much clearer.

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0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 27, 2007

Andrea rated it:

So, I was really jazzed to read this book as it is a) a memoir, b) set in the 1980s, and c) about food. And there were parts of it I really liked. But, overall, I was a bit disappointed. Every time the book seemed to rev up, it let me down again. Part of the problem was the non-chronological nature of the book...it was hard to get any momentum for me as a reader when the author kept going back and forth in time (and not in an interesting way). And her time markers (TV shows, songs, etc. of More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 09, 2007

Jeff rated it:

What a great walk down memory lane. The only thing missing was Russ' restaurant. Bich Minh Nguyen writes in agonizing detail about the dilemma of cross-cultural existence, with applications to be made in every direction. As one of the tall, blonde, problematic Dutch Reformed that made her life miserable, it was an especially painful read, soothed only by her incredibly similar memories of food from the '70s and '80s. Her description of being not quite American, but neither quite Vietnamese r More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Sep 06, 2007

Sharron rated it:

I really enjoyed this book. The author's need to fit in through gorging herself with American junk food was fascinating. I would definitely recommend this book especially to those who could remember the Vietnam war and the boat people who proabably settled in their neighborhoods and went to their schools.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Bich Minh Nguyen's humorous coming-of-age tale mines themes of loss and identity by cleverly retelling anecdotes in chapters dealing with__or gleefully obsessing over?__particular American foods. Her prose is engaging, and half the fun is reliving with her the pop culture of the 1980s. Rosa's role as "mom"/tyrant/activist is rich and resonating, but critics were split over the effect of Nguyen's birth mother, whose fleeting appearance is powerful but unexplained. The novel's chronology

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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 05, 2008

Michelle rated it:

I LOVED this book.
Although I am a white girl with dark hair, I could relate to the author. It seemed that she was pretty close to my age, the coveted red Tupperware lunchbox was a big giveaway! There was that one girl in my 5th grade class: long blonde hair down to her butt-that sometimes was done up in fancy french braids!-bright blue eyes,she was super skinny, and she was rich because she took ballet classes and wore Jordache jeans every day! Oh! She also had a beautiful name, Shaund More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 04, 2008

Cathy rated it:

I picked this up on the New Book shelf at the library, attracted by the striking cover design. It's not a bad read -- a Vietnamese immigrant's account of growing up in drearily blonde Grand Rapids. The central conceit is Bich's fixation on American junk food as a symbol of belonging, but after a while the litany of brand names wore on me.

I wanted more insight into herself and her unusual family (her father, a scrappy self-indulgent man, married a Mexican-American activist in what tu More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 15, 2009

Jackie rated it:

Set in Grand Rapids near where I currently live and where I went to college this memoir is luscious. Very cleverly written. It is also an incredible reflection on being marginalized as a 2nd generation immigrant. Overtones of adoption with the mystery surrounding a missing birth mother.

The book has some really compelling chapters--I thought the chapter in which she breaks into her neighbors' house while they're gone was especially poignant and the chapters that included description o More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2011

Osho rated it:

Nguyen's memoir of growing up Vietnamese in Michigan after fleeing Saigon in 1975 is somewhat different from similar memoirs, and perhaps shouldn't be understood as an example of the same genre. Many accounts that begin with a similar premise are about not fitting in, about traumatization, about striving for the immigrant's version of the American Dream. While Nguyen certainly enacts and recounts all of these themes, the story in the forefront of this memoir is the allure of a particular form of More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2009

Kim rated it:

Nguyen writes about growing up in Michigan in the 80s after she and most of her family escaped from Vietnam. Her observations about the cultures, delivered through intimate, bite-sized images of the foods we eat, place the reader in that no man's land between the cultures. This is what most critics notice and applaud.

But what I would praise Nguyen for isn't so much that as her dead on ability to evoke the isolation and longing of adolescence. Because she doesn't address it openly, th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 25, 2008

Paige Turner rated it:

I really enjoyed this book, but some of it might have to do with the fact that I know the author's brother. Aside from that, it was just a really interesting memoir because it was different from my life as a kid. I'd always had friends from different cultures, many of them refugees, and was fascinated with their culture. I do remember my friend who was Indian (from India) hated her culture because she wanted to be American. That didn't last forever and by the time she was about 15 or 16 she More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 10, 2007

Ivy rated it:

Having grown up in a predominately white small town...so small, in fact, that I have only known 2 black families until recently and very few of other varieties and religions...I rarely had the experience of really understanding the issues that confront others from this point of view. So, I am always hungry to understand and get more information. I feel like the struggles she faced were very personal to me from a reader’s point of view. She described things in a way in which I really connected More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 29, 2008

Maya rated it:

I couldn't put it down. Perhaps because the author and I are similar in age, and therefore my memories of growing up are colored by many of the same references, perhaps because the book takes place in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I attended college, I found a lot to identify with here.

What I found most interesting, however, is that although my family situation couldn't have been more different, Nguyen's description of the way she moved between two cultures mirrored my own emotion More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 08, 2008

Nomi rated it:

This is a highly readable memoir. Using the lens of Vietnamese vs. American food, Nguyen, who arrived in the U.S. as a baby, vividly describes her experience growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the 1980s. As a second generation American growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s and 1960s I identified with many of the scenes and feelings she depicts. The weakest part of the book concerns the history of her fractured yet cohesive family unit. I thought the final reveal of her mother's life was no More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 28, 2008

Callie rated it:

I had a tremendous amount of fun with this book when I started it a few months ago. Bich Minh is almost exactly the same age I am and I was struck over and over with the unexpectedness of the connections I felt with her--unexpected because my lily-white, American-born, farm-raised life is almost the opposite of a Vietnamese refugee living in the suburban mid-west. Turns out, though, that being bookish, glasses-wearing girls growing up in 70s and 80s America means we had quite a lot in common. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 29, 2007

Tonyia rated it:

There are a lot of fascinating things about this memoir. The author's grandmother, Noi, almost seems like a goddess herself. She never talks, but her presence and impact on the author speak for themselves. The author's story of how she left Vietnam is amazing, and her return to the country at the end of the book is a really interesting (and kind of sad) parallel to the rest of the book, in that as she was growing up, she did not feel she fit in and did not truly identify as what she saw as a typ More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 07, 2007

Rachel rated it:

I enjoyed reading this book. It is autobiographical. The story is about the author, a Vietnamese girl, and her family as she grows up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Nguyen family fled Vietnam at the close of the Vietnam War.

The bulk of the book deals with the tension between preserving their Vietnamese Buddhist culture and trying to assimilate in the Dutch Christian Reformed Community where they find themselves.

I especially enjoyed Nguyen's descriptions of the food her g More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 12, 2008

Michael rated it:

A great memoir about growing up in the 70's and 80's, and struggling with wanting to be like everyone else while discovering you're not all like anyone else, and numbing the pain of that realization with two decades of wonderfully bad food, music and television. Hide out in the top bunk and wallow in Pringles, Ponderosa, Carl Buddig, Bubble Yum, Hubba Bubba, Little Cesear's buy 1 get 1 free, Electric Co, Angie Dickinson in Police Woman, Love Boat, The A-Team, Chronicles of Narnia, Duran Duran, a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 03, 2008

Claire rated it:

I loved this book about a girl who was a vietnamese immigrant trying to fit in with all the other blonde girls at her school and in her neighborhood. I did not find her views and discriptions on the 80's dull, but rather fascinating. I, a few months ago, saw an obituary in the newspaper about Nguyen's grandmother who she practically worshiped throughout hte book. It was sad to see someone who played an important role in one of my favorite books had died. I tried to think about how Nguyen felt, b More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 15, 2009

Dawn rated it:

This is the memoirs of a Vietnamese girl, describing her life growing up in Grand Rapids Michigan. The first chapter telling the story of the family's escape from Viet Nam in 1975 and the last two chapters telling the story of meeting her mother and going back to Viet Nam were engaging. The middle chapters, which revolved around growing up and not fitting into the generally white, middle class neighborhoods of Grand Rapids, were a bit repetitive and somewhat tiresome. If those were written as More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 15, 2012

Shul rated it:

I'd like to give this book four stars, but at the end, I have to give it three, but it's more like a 3.5 (why don't they have half stars?)

Stealing Buddha's Dinner is about a Vietnamese girl who's family fled from their home to live in America. All Bich wants to do is be an American, and also to be invisible. I really liked her character, mostly because she reminds me of how I remember myself as a child. I can see myself being friends with her, sharing books and crawling through bus More...

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Jul 06, 2011

Lyndon rated it:

Food is an important metaphor for American culture in Bich Minh Nguyen’s memoir, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner. Growing up in Michigan in the 1980s, young Bich adores, even obsesses over, the cultural icons of that decade – from pop music to fast food and candy. She wants to consume it all. In her memoir, the role of the food she sees in commercials (“Hey, Kool-Aid!”) represents the essence of what is truly American.

Her particular family situation is insightful as to why she was so drawn More...

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Jun 12, 2011

Janice rated it:

The back cover states: "Beginning with her family's harrowing migration out of Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddha's Dinner follows Bich Nguyen as she comes of age in the pre-PC-era Midwest. Filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, Nguyen's desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food..."

This is a very well-written memoir and interesting to me because I remember the fall of Saigon and seeing the people struggling to get on the last helicopters out. Ms More...

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